Intercultural Sensitivity on the Websites of the Hospitals Belonging to the Andalusian Public Health Service (SSPA), Spain

Attention to interculturality in hospital web services should be considered as an aspect to take into account as an indicator of quality, especially given that little evidence is available about it in the general literature. Accordingly we undertook a study among the Andalusian hospitals of the Andalusian Public Health Service (SSPA), which are committed to provide the citizens with a quality service (considered for our purposes to be the services related to web pages). We undertook a cross-sectional, observational study to assess intercultural contact between immigrants and the hospital via web pages. We used a test to determine the presence or absence of certain intercultural attributes grouped into 3 sections composed of different items: languages, corporate values and content, and information content for immigrants on the web pages of the SSPA hospitals.The results indicate that the web pages of the SSPA hospitals are not designed for intercultural relations with immigrants, given the lack of translation of these attributes to different languages on the hospital web pages.In conclusion, we found a complete lack of linguistic diversity, and little interest in this aspect by the managers of these hospitals or the Andalusian Ministry of Health. On the other hand however, the notice concerning the rights and obligations of the citizens has been translated into 7 different languages. Very little consideration was given to translations of food menus or information about religious services. The Andalusian Health Ministry has preferred to use a telephone translation service rather than having permanent translators available in the hospitals. More information for immigrants should be provided on the web pages, such as manuals and guides as well as cross-border health information.